Dreams of Maryam Tair: Blue Boots and Orange Blossoms by Mhani Alaoui

Author:Mhani Alaoui [Alaoui, Mhani]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781566560917
Publisher: Interlink Publishing Group Inc

Perception

So Maryam took an ancient road in a country that had chosen to forget its past. She let herself be filled with the knowledge that she too could be conjured away, as Aoud Errih carried her farther and farther from her home.

~

When the sun had passed high noon and begun to fade into the horizon, Maryam finally saw the small French-built school and shop that lay at the edge of the mental asylum of Birsoukout. The school and shop were bathed in the reddening light of dying day, and to their right lay Birsoukout. The gates were made of wood and were unguarded. Maryam did not know what to expect of a place whose mere name brought terror to people’s hearts and made heroes frail. “Dogs or mean guards, demons, but what do I know of them all? Aoud Errih, you have brought me to this place with such speed. You must be so tired. Rest here, you be the guard. I’m going in.” The small bicycle shuddered and fell to the floor, as in protest. “It’ll be okay. If I’m not back out by morning, go get Zohra.” She looked affectionately at the rusty little thing on the floor and put it gently against the wall by the gates. Then she whispered, “Thank you for bringing me here. I love you.”

The gates were half-open. The dreaded hospice had the easy approach of a simple rural house, harmlessly aging in the backroads of the Casablanca countryside.

Maryam walked in. The courtyard was empty and no one was in sight. She walked on, but still she encountered no one. The place seemed deserted. The air was too still. Maryam felt the brightness in her heart begin to drain away. She stopped and inhaled a long, deep breath. She wondered why the stillness and deserted aspect of the place filled her with such sadness. It was like no place she had ever been to. It seemed neither aggressive nor oppressive. The silence was not a full-bodied, heavy one. Instead, it was a silence made of emptiness. The place, she realized, was silent because it was in the business of producing nothingness. She stood there silently, her shadow long and delicate on the cracked pavement. Her eyes were very large and rimmed with blue. They always had been. They expressed every feeling or thought she had with the transparency of a pure mountain spring. Zohra often said that her eyes revealed too much. She should lower them often, she’d say, to protect herself against the outside world.

They grew even larger as she understood the peculiar silence that reigned in Birsoukout. It was an arid silence. The walls loomed high on either side of her. Twisted shrubbery grew on these walls surrounding the buildings and the courtyard within. Maryam looked under the greying plants to check her hunch. There she found the water faucet, brown and rusting from years of neglect. She turned the faucet, but no water came out. It was as she had suspected.

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